Sillyscurry has kindly linked and commented further on my last posting about Monty Python and the Japanese subtitles. Apparently Monty Python was reissued on video and DVD in Japan in the late 1990s by Universal, with new subtitles, and "Saxone's" was translated as "Saxon shoes" instead of "Saxons" (as in Ancient Britons). I have to confess, I can't remember what I saw exactly in the subtitle (a few Kirin Beers might have passed my lips by then) but I suspect it was the earlier Pony Canyon translation.
"Saxon shoes" is still not an accurate translation of course, but then you really do start sympathising with the difficulties of being the translator. There's a limited space for the subtitles (and you're probably being paid peanuts too). So you can't put "Saxone's (which should be sakusohnzu in phonetic Japanese, not the sakuson of 'Saxon') - a well known rather downmarket shoeshop chain which is now part of Barratts." I suppose you could either try to think of a Japanese equivalent (Amerikaya?) or say "discount store" in Japanese.
"Ancient Britons" is probably funnier and truer to the surreal spirit of Monty Python.
Sillyscurry, a blog written in Japanese and English by Kitamura Genkotsu, a Japanese student living in London, linked to my entry about the death of the Japanese comedian Ikariya Chosuke and mentioned that some people say The Drifters, the troupe that Ikariya led, were like Monty Python. I can see the similarity in terms of their huge influence on a generation and beyond, and also in the fact that both were first popular in the early 1970s. And The Drifters could get pretty surreal too, although the setting for the show was always a traditional proscenium arch stage.
I've often wondered how anyone brought up outside of the UK can find Monty Python funny though, packed as it is with so many obscure British cultural references. I wonder whether children recently arrived in the UK in the early 1970s (when I had just arrived in Japan) also watched Monty Python as I watched the Drifters and tried out the catchphrases in the playground in order to make friends.
When I was in Japan again in the 1990s, I borrowed Monty Python videos from the local rental store and found that someone had gone to the trouble of putting Japanese subtitles on them. They were mostly accurate but one cultural reference escaped them. In the fire brigade sketch, Mrs Little (Terry Jones) is asked questions about her shoes by a fireman on the phone, and says "Saxones" (the now defunct shoe shop chain), obviously in response to being asked where she had bought them from. The no doubt by now desperate Japanese subtitler plumped for "Ancient Britons" as the translation.
We moved to Japan, to a city in the north called Sendai, when I was six years' old. The bullet train did not go as far as Sendai in those days, and there were very few foreigners living there, apart from some missionary families and families who taught (as mine did) at the local universities.
I went to a Japanese kindergarten and then a Japanese school, as there were no international schools. This meant I learnt Japanese as one learns a first language - by repeating what other people said, in the contexts they said it in, without consciously understanding the vocabulary or grammar. There was one nun (it was a Catholic school) who could speak English, who would help me once a week with any questions I had, and the Japanese alphabet, counting and days of the week.
The other person who helped me was Ikariya Chosuke, who died at the age of 72 on the 20th March. He led a comedy troupe called The Drifters, who had a very silly variety programme on TV on Saturday nights from 1969 to 1985, called Hachijidayo, Zeninshugo!"("It's Eight O'Clock! Let's Get Together!") It was extremely scatalogical, but my parents, thankfully, realised that being able to laugh at jokes in another language, no matter how crude, was helping my confidence, so they would let me stay up to watch it.
Ikariya's death has provoked a wave of nostalgia from Japanese people of my generation who remember repeating The Drifters' catchphrases in the playground. I could still probably sing the whole opening song word perfect given the chance. Apparently the programme took over 50% of the viewing audience in 1973, putting it in the top 50 most watched programmes of all time in Japan. So it was a very effective way of me being able to find some common ground with my classmates - vital for settling down in a new culture.
Watching my toddler son learn to speak and read has shown me how even the youngest children are drawn to books about bodily functions. He loves Maurice Sendak's 'Some Swell Pup', even though it's got way too many words for him, because of the graphic weeing and pooing of the little puppy. Which reminds me, I really should get him this book, 'Everyone Poops', which, no coincidence perhaps, is by a Japanese author.
We moved to Japan, to a city in the north called Sendai, when I was six years' old. The bullet train did not go as far as Sendai in those days, and there were very few foreigners living there, apart from some missionary families and families who taught (as mine did) at the local universities.
I went to a Japanese kindergarten and then a Japanese school, as there were no international schools. This meant I learnt Japanese as one learns a first language - by repeating what other people said, in the contexts they said it in, without consciously understanding the vocabulary or grammar. There was one nun (it was a Catholic school) who could speak English, who would help me once a week with any questions I had, and the Japanese alphabet, counting and days of the week.
The other person who helped me was Ikariya Chosuke, who died at the age of 72 on the 20th March. He led a comedy troupe called The Drifters, who had a very silly variety programme on TV on Saturday nights from 1969 to 1985, called Hachijidayo, Zeninshugo!"("It's Eight O'Clock! Let's Get Together!") It was extremely scatalogical, but my parents, thankfully, realised that being able to laugh at jokes in another language, no matter how crude, was helping my confidence, so they would let me stay up to watch it.
Ikariya's death has provoked a wave of nostalgia from Japanese people of my generation who remember repeating The Drifters' catchphrases in the playground. I could still probably sing the whole opening song word perfect given the chance. Apparently the programme took over 50% of the viewing audience in 1973, putting it in the top 50 most watched programmes of all time in Japan. So it was a very effective way of me being able to find some common ground with my classmates - vital for settling down in a new culture.
Watching my toddler son learn to speak and read has shown me how even the youngest children are drawn to books about bodily functions. He loves Maurice Sendak's 'Some Swell Pup', even though it's got way too many words for him, because of the graphic weeing and pooing of the little puppy. Which reminds me, I really should get him this book, 'Everyone Poops', which, no coincidence perhaps, is by a Japanese author.